Me (Imperial Fists) and my friend (Deathkorps of Krieg) are working on a story-driven painting log and later roleplaying setting (perhaps Deathwatch) were the focus lies on the are around the north-eastern Fringe and the Ghoul stars.

The knowledge I got about the necrons is very shallow, so I ask you that knows about necrons:
What would you as a phaeron do to overtake a planet or solarsystem? And what would drive you:
-If it is an ancient artifact that the humans have stolen, what would it be?
-Have you just arousen from the slumber deep beneath the imperial cities?
-Something else?

What would your "fluffy" army consist of?

Grateful for help! ^^

Ah, by the way, here is a short intro

Segmentum: Ultima
Area: Ghoul Stars

In the year of the Emperor 994.999.M41

Imperial Fists 5th Company, accompanied with Lysander and veterans from the 1st Company on the patrolling Strike Cruiser 'Terrible Angel', have received information that the forge world of Porteus has been under heavy assault, by the foul powers of the Necrons.

Veterans from Deathkorps of Krieg; 10th siege regiment, was a couple of weeks before dispatched to Porteus to reinforce and resupply their ranks, but now all contacts with them have been cut off.

And a simple mission briefing for the fists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCA78nISA-c

Theocracity

10-02-2014, 20:09

I think their method and rationale would depend on the flavor of Necron you're dealing with. My take on a few ideas to ponder:

How courtly are they? Are they lead by a long-dead king with intentions to restore his kingdom? Are there any courtly intrigue or politics involved? The more courtly they are, the greater chance that their invasion will be formalized (declarations of war, use of air forces, occupation of the populace) and the more chance it was driven by desire for empire, vanity or as a ploy of intrigue.

What was their relationship to the C'tan? Did they abolish and fear the C'tan, or are they arrogant and wiling to use the power of the captured shards? Are they dominated by a powerful shard's will, or are they watchful guardians of their prisons? The more involved with the C'tan they are, the more likely they invaded to seek a tesseract labyrinth that holds a C'tan shard (to use, guard, or reabsorb) or another relic of their legacy.

How damaged are they? Were they damaged during their long sleep, or corrupted during their fight with the C'tan? The more damaged they are, the less likely that their motivations are understandable - they could be robotic and soulless or insane and delusional. This would likely result in more use of Flayers or Destroyers, and more insane goals (which can affect the previous two categories as well).

How technological are they? Do they seek the power of their old mad science creations, or seek to reflesh their bodies? This might result in more scarabs and such.

How long have they been awake? Do they serve the Triarch, or Trazyn the Infinite? Or have they just awoken and are coming to terms with the new world? The older they are, the more likely they are to be employed serving one of their benefactor's purposes.

I could ramble on I suppose, but I think that if you define the character of your Necron force - with any combination of the above thoughts or anything else - I think it would help define their goals and strategy.

Edit: A fluff example from my group's campaign: the Necrons are guardians of a dead C'tan, which lies at the center of a spatial anomaly. Their watch stations have long been misidentified as belonging to a different xenos culture, but now that fighting has started to spill closer to the center of the anomaly they have started to wake. They are soulless killing machines who do not communicate with others - not because of damage to their minds or hate, but because they cannot allow life near the dead god. If he feeds and gains enough power to break his prison, they know they'd all be doomed.

Armfelt

10-02-2014, 20:29

Thank you Theocracity for your swift and thoroughly reply! You opened up ideas atleast for me, but I must consult my friend before I can give a just response. And if you manage to be troubled more, I would appreciate more of your help :)

More tips and ideas (also from others) are of course more than welcome! ^^

Theocracity

10-02-2014, 20:57

No problem! I'm sort of an amateur at Necron fluff so I'm not sure how much help I can be, but here's a couple of ideas off the top of my head:

The Wight King: an ancient warlord, considered a barbarian among the cultured Necrotyr, used to rule this planet when the hills were young. Now he has awoken from his sleep, still surrounded by spoils of riches and trinkets of power, still unable to find joy from them in his digitized soul. He arises from his tomb with wrathful hordes to strike back at those who would take his one pleasure away from him - his kingdom.

The Puppetmaster: Imperium forces arrive at the planet on a routine mission to find its population glassy-eyed and confused. A contagious form of mind-scarab - the work of a greedy cryptek - has infected the populace and made them his pawns. He uses them as shields for his powerful technomagic while he works to excavate a Necron super weapon buried deep in the planet's mantle.

The Player of Games: For a hundred years, a cluster of forgotten and haunted planets have given rise to several dynastic houses. Each is lead by a colorful and eccentric personalities, and each play out their immortal lives by conducting mannered war on each other in a game-like fashion, content that their pawns will never truly die. The scorekeeping for each round is considered of upmost importance, and courtly intrigue is as important as tactical cunning to get the upper hand. One phaeron has decided that he will bend the byzantine rules by invading a planet outside of the play area - to the detriment of its human population.

The Deciever: basically, old-school Necrons. Soulless phalanxes of warriors take the world by surprise, aided by the mind control of the powerful C'tan shard that controls them. Soon, monoliths will open portals that feed the captured populace's life energy into the maws of the hungry star god.

=Angel=

11-02-2014, 20:03

Theocracity has knocked this one out of the park. I'm just commenting to applaud and suggest damaged violent oldcrons on their omnicidal kill all fleshling programming.

But if you're leaning to actual roleplay and not just explosions then his suggestions about courtly intrigue will be great.

Nazrax

17-02-2014, 08:40

One cool thing about the newest Necron fluff is the room for lots and lots of variation and craziness. I often think of them as both soulless, silent machines driven by cold hard logic and lunatic, jibberish spouting, rambling contructs driven by ageless insanities and impossibly foreign Xenos thought processes.

I like the idea of a Necron lord that is logical and practical yet has some sort of bizarre hang-up about the number 8, triangles or things that have mercury in them or any sort of strange and wonderful thing(s).

Had the idea of a Necron lord who is honor bound by ancient Necron ritual and tradition reclaiming his dynastic holdings. Every world that once was part of the dynasty is given the chance to surrender and submit to the will of the Phareon. In person the lord delivers the terms of surrender and allows the subjects of the world to look upon his glory. Now the Phareon has set his immortal eye upon an Imperial hive world.

Without warning there is a sudden armada of ships over the hive world and suddenly massive Necron forces are teleported down onto the Main through-fare to the Imperial Palace. There is a large fanfare of Nightscythes and Doomscythes flying overhead and a vast procession of warrior phalanxes, Immortals, Arks and barges marching down the through-fare, Wraiths flit and flicker down near-by streets and alleyways, in and out of the astonished onlookers.

The Necron court(Lord included) march up into the Imperial governor's palace past dumbfounded courtiers and servants, ignoring and shrugging off any and all attempts to stop them by the palace guard.
To the throne room itself, where the governor sits wide-eyed and trembling slightly, perhaps even pissing himself abit.( I have the image of some inbred half-wit governor sitting on an over-sized garishly decorated throne.)

The Necron procession halts and the Lord comes forward to announce the terms of the planet's surrender. He gives the hall a quick disdainful glace around, but something catches his eye. What is this!?! These insignificant mortals dare adorn themselves in orange!?! The outrage! The insult! This cannot be allowed!!

With a silent command the lord orders his army to attack, to destroy, to punish these impudent fools. The lord and his court, as quickly as they came suddenly vanish, teleported back to there ships and command barges now intent upon laying waste to this Imperial hive world.

I have alot of fun imagining little scenarios such as this, as you can guess Im sure ;). One thing I like about 40k is that there is alot of humor, silliness and crazy lurking anywhere and everywhere. Another thing is that as a setting you are free to make it your own and come up with the truly bizarre, insane and terrible.

Since you are playing Imperial Fists and Death Korp of Kreig, who are both dour, stern, unyielding forces, perhaps the Necrons are erratic, incomprehensible and colorful.

The more you role-play the better I believe! It is almost impossible not to cackle when I think of some wacky Necron lord facing off against some up-tight Inquisitor or Imperial Guard general. One throwing countless troops into a meat-grinder for little or no tactical gain. The other wasting time and resources chasing after some impossible salvation, artifact or strategy. But which side is doing which? Does it matter?

editSo after posting this and then going back and rereading the OP I thought more and figured since you are asking what Necron forces folks consider fluffy, I would try and answer that- at least imho.

Necrons are great in that there isnt alot of set army compositional fluff, you can make up anything you like. There are no army-based warlord traits, no chapter tactics, no foC hoops to jump through, no established fluffy army lists.(IA 12 being the only exception that I can recall)

If you like loads of warriors, go for it! If you wants lots of vehicles, do it! Love constructs? Cool! We got em! Want tons of flyers? Great! Make your own fluffy army and roll with it!
Maybe start with a few HQ types and make some fluff for them, then trickle down to the troops, elites, FA and heavy support.

I myself like lots of warriors and wraiths.

I often use Zandrekh or make my own Overlord, sometimes pair Zandrekh with Obyron and a Destroyer lord or Overlord and D-Lord for my 2 HQ choices.

I will take a royal court with usually 2 lords with rezz orbs and maybe warscythes and 2-3 crypteks of various flavors, Stormteks I find work well with warriors units as they get some CC help in the form of lightning fields.

I take 3+ Warrior units(usually 4 or more) and put 8-9 man squads into Arks with a cryptek or lord or both. Lately I have been taking a unit of Immortals with tesla cause they are nasty and I find tesla funny bouncing around frying things.

I dont really use any of the elites as I find them either lackluster in ability and over-priced or just not my cup of tea. Although I do love the imagery of flayed ones and C'tan shards, I dont have alot of flayed ones models and shards get to be costly points-wise. I dont have any stalkers mostly cause I am not a fan of the model.

Fast attack: I use 1-2 units of wraiths(1 paired with the D-Lord is always brutal!) I many times will take a unit of destroyers because I have good results with them and find that people are still wary of them and will often times spend alot of effort taking them out. Scarabs are used about half the time. They are a good unit and they do well for me but sometimes I find that I run out of points before I can fit them in.

Heavy support: Annihilation Barges are beastly. I often take 2. I will also take a monolith if i dont go with barges and I mix in spyders as well. If I take scarabs I almost always take spyders. Put those two together-make babies=profit!

That is my usual army composition and for fluff I like to imagine that when I take Zandrekh/Obyron, Zandrekh is wanting to talk strategy and meet the enemy general for discussions of honor and glory while Obyron quietly does all the real work and keeps poor old Zandy out of real trouble. Kinda similar to the actual fluff but I imagine it to be more comical and wacky. Sometimes I get to play out the silliness of Zandy and have him go off to "chat" with the enemy leader or heroically charge that group of tanks. Suffice to say, he doesnt last very long and I have had some wonderfully bad dice rolls and wonderfully good dice rolls with him and everytime he ends up beating something down and dying himself or he dies while talking of honor to a shrubbery. On the really bad rolls I usually tell my opponent that since Zandy is getting stomped so bad that we should move him to the nearest terrain piece or enemy unit(by himself) and then I will role-play a little chat with a flower, a dressing down of a wall or some-such silliness. My opponents and I always have a good laugh and we oft-times end up spending much of the rest of the game role-playing out all sorts of wackiness on both sides. I swear, once you have some craziness with dice and role-play it out, it will keep happening again and again. It makes rolling poorly much, much more enjoyable! I am giggling to myself even now as i write this thinking of all the absurdities I have participated in while having a game of 40k.

Quick note cause I often times get lost in the humor and absurd with Zandrekh and Obyron: When I use the generic Overlord and D-Lord I will sometimes play like the oldcrons fluff had them-mindless soulless legions of death. Other times I will have the royal court be at odds with each other and so during the battle they will purposefully move out of position of each other or somehow attempt to interfere with the others. I am lucky in that most of my opponents are friends so they are happy to let me do silly things or even self-defeating things just to add flavor to a battle. I really want to have a game where the Necrons steal a stormraven and then drop troops onto the enemy. Ranks of Necron warriors marching out the side of a hovering Stormraven while "It's Raining Men!" is playing in the background.

Charistoph

17-02-2014, 15:50

One cool thing about the newest Necron fluff is the room for lots and lots of variation and craziness. I often think of them as both soulless, silent machines driven by cold hard logic and lunatic, jibberish spouting, rambling contructs driven by ageless insanities and impossibly foreign Xenos thought processes.

I like the idea of a Necron lord that is logical and practical yet has some sort of bizarre hang-up about the number 8, triangles or things that have mercury in them or any sort of strange and wonderful thing(s).

Had the idea of a Necron lord who is honor bound by ancient Necron ritual and tradition reclaiming his dynastic holdings. Every world that once was part of the dynasty is given the chance to surrender and submit to the will of the Phareon. In person the lord delivers the terms of surrender and allows the subjects of the world to look upon his glory. Now the Phareon has set his immortal eye upon an Imperial hive world.

Without warning there is a sudden armada of ships over the hive world and suddenly massive Necron forces are teleported down onto the Main through-fare to the Imperial Palace. There is a large fanfare of Nightscythes and Doomscythes flying overhead and a vast procession of warrior phalanxes, Immortals, Arks and barges marching down the through-fare, Wraiths flit and flicker down near-by streets and alleyways, in and out of the astonished onlookers.

The Necron court(Lord included) march up into the Imperial governor's palace past dumbfounded courtiers and servants, ignoring and shrugging off any and all attempts to stop them by the palace guard.
To the throne room itself, where the governor sits wide-eyed and trembling slightly, perhaps even pissing himself abit.( I have the image of some inbred half-wit governor sitting on an over-sized garishly decorated throne.)

The Necron procession halts and the Lord comes forward to announce the terms of the planet's surrender. He gives the hall a quick disdainful glace around, but something catches his eye. What is this!?! These insignificant mortals dare adorn themselves in orange!?! The outrage! The insult! This cannot be allowed!!

With a silent command the lord orders his army to attack, to destroy, to punish these impudent fools. The lord and his court, as quickly as they came suddenly vanish, teleported back to there ships and command barges now intent upon laying waste to this Imperial hive world.

That's awesome.

I was just thinking about an Overlord who is looking for lost vulcanized water fowl and goes around smashing worlds he thinks it might be on. Never finding it because the galaxy has changed so much, and it decayed before man discovered fire.

Another thought would be a Tomb World near Earth who has been receiving non-stop transmissions of Terra's sit coms which have corrupted the central programming computers. The Tomb World wakes up thinking THEY are those characters... Yeah, too silly. ;)